Are We Rebuilding the Prison?

“Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

With the removal of the much maligned National Standards this year, Schools and teachers have been in a surreal, yet advantageous position of still having to report to the community regarding student progress, while not having an official standard enforced by the Ministry to measure the students against. 

Many schools have continued with the status quo. Creating their own 'school standard' which is essentially measuring students against curriculum progression levels. To measure student progress completing the same collation of data. Ironically, this collation and analysis of assessment data on top of teaching what is already an overcrowded curriculum is what is causing teachers to complain about being overworked. 

For the classroom teacher, expectations have continued as they were before the removal of the National Standards. 

All of this coincides with the most dramatic teacher shortage the country has ever faced. It is ironic that in our moment to be innovative and rebuild the system as we want it to be, that we, as a profession have decided to rebuild the prison, rather than look for opportunities to allow teachers to focus more of their energies into being creative, effective teachers for our students.

Brian Annan espouses a philosophy of 'Stuff in-Stuff out'. Meaning when new initiatives are introduced to teacher workload, something else needs to be removed from it in order to maintain balance.

Effective professional development should be an ongoing priority for schools. Through consistently informing and challenging teachers to evolve in either their understanding of curriculum content or their pedagogy, a climate of innovation is introduced. As long as teachers are encouraged to evolve and are armed with the knowledge and tools to do so, the flow on effect can only be beneficial to the students in their classrooms.

At the moment through the CoL systems, only chosen 'specialist' teachers are receiving this information. They then deliver a diluted version to other staff members, or a version infused with the Principal's philosophy is delivered.

This differs from the SEMO initiative introduced in the Mangere and Otara communities during the early 2000's where ALL staff heard the message from the lips of experts, were fed professionally then empowered, expected and supported to make changes in their teaching programmes. It was an exciting time to teach in those communities and the results where reflective of the approach.

My concern is that in education at the moment, we have lost that approach and are attempting to rebuild the system that shackled teachers, with the same materials. 

One problem with prisons is that everyone wants to get out.